How to remove Higedgene pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Higedgene pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the material of the site you explored or opening your web browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Higedgene ad can result in the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guideline of Higedgene popups removal in several manners, as well as inspecting your system for extra malware presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Higedgene manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Higedgene pop-ups?

Higedgene popups are an outcome of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which generates a major amount of earnings for adware suppliers. These promotions might include sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Higedgene push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a very good, affordable and also very successful marketing method¹. It allows the seller to attach the buyers’ interest to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% price cut, one will certainly use this opportunity and get it. Taking into consideration the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising tool is a much-loved thing amidst the advertising teams of huge online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a successful plan could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to show the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Higedgene.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short info for the Higedgene

How have I got the Higedgene virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that cause the Higedgene popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is delivered as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of people oftentimes use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, various apps that are free, or perhaps hacked programs. All of these types of applications are dangerous, because it is very simple to integrate a Higedgene malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Higedgene popup malware may also be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are usually loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually permit any kind of promos to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may likewise receive something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially unwanted programs, like Higedgene popup virus can cause a wide range of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the single problem – pop-ups may show you the banners, where you are offered to get another unknown program, or “a perfect anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is very hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these ads, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Higedgene pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Higedgene adware clearing consists of 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then repair the consequences of its activity. The removal procedure is very simple, since it may be done even with the use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, because of its huge resources usage, along with some bugs that may be crucial for some types of users, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Additionally, various trojan viruses can switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such weakness.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will definitely remove the malware from your computer and create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s take care of Higedgene adware initially.

Removing Higedgene popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

• Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.

• Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Higedgene malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :

2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :

2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

If you use Google Chrome

1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :

2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :

3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :

Opera can be reset in the next way

1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :


2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content³:

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot more difficult to restore, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variations that are used to show you the Higedgene pop-up advertisements are changing the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, until you attempt to open settings once more.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.